Redmond's cloud goes dark worldwide

Updated Microsoft is struggling to sort out an Azure cloud outage that has today left users around the world unable to access various services.

According to a message posted to the Azure service status page, the outage spans "Cloud Services, Virtual Machines, Websites, Automation, Service Bus, Backup, Site Recovery, HDInsight, Mobile Services and possible other Azure Services in multiple regions."

Affected service regions include multiple areas of the US, Europe, Japan, Brazil, and the Asia Pacific region.

The outage comes close on the heels of a similar cockup last week that saw customers worldwide locked out of Redmond's Visual Studio Online services for developers.

In that case, the problem was reportedly a database issue that was resolved when Microsoft engineers rolled back some software changes that they had made to the data center over the preceding 24 hours.

Microsoft has given no explanation for Monday's Azure service interruption so far, saying only that it is "currently evaluating options to restore service" and that it will update its status page when more information becomes available.

When last we checked, service was already being restored to the Automation, Site Recovery, and Backup features, with more updates to come. ®

Updated to add at 2132 GMT, August 18

The offline systems are starting to come back online, we're told. Microsoft reports on its Azure status site:

Starting at 18 Aug 2014 17:49 UTC, we are experiencing an interruption to Azure Services, may include Cloud Services, Virtual Machines Websites, Automation, Service Bus, Backup, Site Recovery, HDInsight, Mobile Services, StorSimple and possible other Azure Services in multiple regions. Customers began to experience service restoration as updates were deployed across the affected environment.